Hi everyone it's kunihiro thank you for coming
back to my kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make tempura step by step. So let's begin. Okay so first I want to show you
the ingredients in tempura batter. I have 100 grams of cake flour, 180 milliliters of
water, and one large size egg. Now there are a few things I want you to remember when making tempura
batter. First, the biggest enemy of tempura batter is gluten. Gluten produces when the protein
contained in flour mixes with water. So the more gluten in your tempura butter the less
crispy and heavier your tempura becomes. So, to achieve light and crispy tempura you
have to use flour with the least protein content which is cake flour. And the second important
thing is that all ingredients must be cold when mixing because warmer temperatures
will produce gluten quickly. So please cool all the ingredients in the fridge first including the
cake flour. So while waiting for them to cool down we'll prepare all the other ingredients first
and come back to making the tempura batter. Today I'm using eggplant, carrot, broccoli,
shiso leaf, kabocha squash, shiitake mushrooms, and shrimp. When making tempura, I recommend
using relatively dry vegetables like those. Watery vegetables such as cucumber and tomato
make tempura coating soggy very quickly. So please avoid them. And the best size for the
shrimp is 16 to 20 counts per pound. You don't need anything bigger than that. Now, let's cut
vegetables. The first one is kabocha squash. This one is kind of hard so
you need both hands to cut it. The thickness of each slice is about 5 millimeters
once deep-fried it will shrink a little so if you cut it thinner than that, you won't taste
the kabocha but if you cut it thicker than that, tempura coating will burn before kabocha
cooks completely so please be careful. The next one is carrot you don't need to
peel the skin but please make sure to wash it first. Cut it diagonally. The thickness is
the same as kabocha squash five millimeters. The next one is broccoli. Since I will make
tempura with a small amount of oil today, if the broccoli is too big, it will touch the
bottom of the pot and get burnt quickly so I will cut it in half and make it smaller.
Okay, the next one is shitake mushroom. First please cut off the stem turn it
over and tilt the knife a little bit and make four shallow cuts at the center
of the mushroom to make it look prettier. When making those cuts, please
don't change the angle of the knife. You only need to rotate the mushroom
and make shadow cuts at the same angle. Shiso leaf is very simple you
just need to cut off the stem. That's it. Next, I'll show
you how to cut eggplant. Please cut off the top. Then split it in half. Then make a few cuts through
the eggplant lengthwise. But leave the edge connected. Then at the
fourth cut, please cut all the way through and make a few more cuts again, but again
make sure to leave the top part connected. Now press it gently with your
fingers and fan out the eggplant. Those cuts will not only make eggplant look
more beautiful but also shorten the frying time. So one two three and cut all the
way and one two three. That's it Okay, we are done with all the
vegetables. So now, let's prepare shrimps. The first thing we do is take
off the shell until this line. And next, remove this spiky shell above the tail. This part contains some water.
So if you don't remove it, the water will pop and oil will splatter when
deep-frying. So please don't forget to remove it. And once you finish removing
shells from all the shrimps, make a shallow incision on the back
of the shrimp to remove the vein. Once it's open, you should see a vein in the
middle. Well, this one doesn't have it. If you don't see the vein at this point, don't cut any
deeper than this. Sometimes they don't have it. Okay, this one has a vein. So please
take it out with your knife like this. Then the next thing we do is cut off the tip of
the tail a little bit and make it look nicer. After cutting, the tail will look
like this. These edges will stand out and make your shrimp tempura look more beautiful. Then, open up the tail and scrape excess water and
dirt out of the tail using the tip of the knife. Once again, if you skip this part, the
water will pop and oil will splatter when deep-frying. So please don't skip
this part. Plus by cleaning the tail, beautiful red color will come out once deep-fried.
After cleaning, the tail will look like this. And once you finish cleaning the tail, please
wash them once and take off remnants of the vein and dirt on the tail. Then dry the
shrimps with paper towels very well. If you don't dry them well at this point,
your shrimp tempera won't become crispy. Instead, it will become soggy. Excess moisture
on ingredients is another enemy of tempura. Next, please put 5-6 shallow incisions
on the belly side of the shrimps. Please don't cut too deep. Only
about 2 millimeters is fine. Next, place the shrimp on the belly side down and press it down against the cutting board
with your fingers to break the muscles. I'm doing this to prevent the shrimps
from curling up when deep-frying. And shrimp is ready. This is the final form
before deep-frying. I'll show you one more time. This time, please listen to the
sounds when I break the muscles. And go over one more time and make sure
you don't hear any more breaking sounds. that's it. Next, i'm going to show you
how to make tempura sauce. So to make tempura sauce, you need 100 milliliters
of mirin, 100 milliliters of soy sauce, and 400 milliliters of dashi. Okay so first
please add mirin and soy sauce to dashi. And bring it to a boil. And once it
starts boiling, turn down the heat and let it simmer for 2 more minutes so that
the alcohol in the mirin will evaporate. and 2 minutes later, turn
off the heat and the sauce is ready. I'm going to heat it again
just before I serve tempura. Next, I'll prepare some grated daikon radish
I'm going to add it to my tempura sauce later. Please transfer the grated
daikon radish into a strainer. And squeeze the juice out gently. Don't squeeze
too much. We want to keep some moisture in it. So after squeezing, the grated daikon will
look like this. It's still nice and moist. Next, I'm going to coat all the ingredients
with cake flour. So please get some cake flour on a tray. Then put the ingredients
on it. Cover them with the cake flour. Then dust off the excess flour. That's it. Coating with flour will help
tempura batter stick to ingredients better. Shitake mushrooms and broccolis have uneven
surfaces so you need to dust off the excess flour very well. Otherwise, the excess flour
left in them will make your tempura very soggy And don't forget to fan out the
eggplant before putting it in the flour. And shiso leaf needs coating only on the backside. And when you do shrimp, please coat only the
meat portion. The tail doesn't need a coating. So after coating with flour,
they will look like this. Now that we have finished preparing
all the other ingredients, let's make tempura batter. The first thing
you have to do is sieve the cake flour with a strainer. By doing this, the cake flour
will dissolve more quickly in the water. Next, put the egg into the water
and stir it until well mixed. Then please add the cake flour into
the mixture little by little and mix. A very important point when mixing
tempura batter is not mixing too much. If you mix it too much more gluten will
produce and your tempura will become soggy. So I'm not really mixing it it's more like
i'm sinking the cake flour into the mixture. After mixing, your tempura batter should look like
this. It's very watery and has lots of lumps in it but that's totally fine. This is the consistency
I look for. Okay since all the prep is done, let's start heating oil. So fill a
medium-sized pot with vegetable oil up to 3 centimeters and
turn on the heat to medium. Alright, so this is the setup when I make tempura.
Basically, I keep everything within my reach so I place the cooling rack on the left of the
oil. So as soon as temper is ready i can put the tempura on the rack. And I place my sieve
here. I use this one to remove tempura bits from the oil so that I can keep the oil clean.
And unwanted tempura bits go into this bowl. The oil is right in the middle. And I place the
tempura batter next to it but not too close to the oil because I don't want my tempura batter
to be warm. And all the ingredients are placed next to the tempura batter. So I can just grab
it, dip in the batter, and drop in the oil. And I keep a clean towel here to wipe my
hand since I touch tempura batter often. And the chopsticks are here. I use
them when I touch tempura in the oil. If you don't have chopsticks, a tong is fine too. Okay, first let's check the temperature of the oil so you need to drop a little bit of
tempura batter into the oil like this. The tempura batter sank to the bottom
and one two seconds later came back up. That is about 150 to 160 degrees
Celsius and it's still too low. It's after 30 seconds. Let me try one more
time. So drop the tempura batter into the oil. This time the tempura batter sank to
the bottom and came right back up. That is about 160 to 170 degrees Celsius and it's
a suitable temperature for deep frying vegetables, especially when making tempura
with a small amount of oil. Okay so let me start with kabocha squash. So dip
them in the batter and drop them into the oil. And if they stick to each other like this,
you have to separate them right away before the batter gets hard. If you wait too long,
the batter will come off when separating them. And don't forget to recheck the temperature at
this point. And if you notice the temperature went down a lot, you need to turn up the
heat. But don't worry too much because the temperature is not gonna drop drastically
unless you overcrowd the pot with ingredients. So when I make tempura at home I always cook
little by little to control the temperature of the oil more easily. I always cook tempura between
medium and low heat and never on high heat. and remove tempura bits
constantly to keep the oil clean. Flip them over every minute otherwise the
bottom side of kabocha will get burnt before it cooks completely. Recheck the temperature and
maintain 160 to 170 degrees celsius all the time. After deep frying them for about 3 minutes,
you will notice the cooking sounds get quieter and you'll see fewer bubbles around the
kabocha. Those are the signs tempura is ready. So please take it out, shake
off the oil, and put it on the rack. At this time please do not stack
the tempura on top of each other. please clean up the oil. Check the temperature and
deep fry next ingredient. Okay, the next one is carrots. So dip them
in the batter and drop them into the oil. The cooking time for this one
is about two minutes and a half. So just like a Kabocha squash, all you
have to do is flip them over every minute, check and maintain the temperature sometimes, and keep the oil clean until
the carrots are fully cooked. Finally, shake off the excess
oil and put it on the rack. And when you deep fry shiitake mushrooms, put
them into the oil with the cap facing up. If you put them in the oil upside down, the batter on the
top part will come off and it doesn't look good. 30 to 40 seconds later when the batter on
the top sets a little you can flip them over. After that, flip them over every
minute and deep fry them for a total of three minutes. Please don't forget to clean
up the oil and maintain the temperature. The next one is eggplant. Please fan
out the eggplant and dip it in the batter like this and gently put it into
the oil with the skin side facing up. And if you want to give additional
coating on the skin side, please apply the batter like this. It
makes the eggplant look much prettier. And when the coating on the top sets
a little, flip the eggplant over. Since eggplant is relatively easy to get burnt, I recommend flipping them over every 40 seconds.
And deep fry them for a total of 2 minutes. And when deep frying broccolis
dip them in the batter, shake off the excess batter a little, and put
them into the oil with the smooth side down. One minute later flip them over but please don't
leave them florets facing down for a long time because florets get burnt very quickly. So 20 to 30 seconds later,
please flip them back again and leave them like this for another one minute
or so. And just before taking them out of the oil, flip them one more time and deep fry for 20
seconds, and make the florets side crispy. 20 seconds later flip them back
and take them out of the oil. The total deep-frying time is
two and a half to three minutes if you want to leave a little crunchiness in
the middle I recommend two and a half minutes. And when you deep fry shiso leaf, get the
batter only on the backside of the shiso leaf. And put it into the oil with the
front side up let me do one more And after 30 seconds, flip them once
and deep fry for another 10 seconds. Then flip them back and take them out of the oil. the cooking time for shiso leaf is only 40
seconds. If you deep fry longer than that, shiso leaf will lose its color so please be careful.
Finally, I am going to make shrimp tempura. The suitable oil temperature for deep
frying shrimp is 170 to 180 degrees celsius at this temperature range tempura batter
barely touches the bottom and comes back up. Now, take one piece of shrimp, make sure to
hold the tail and dip it in the batter like this and gently put it in the oil
with the belly side facing up. And as soon as the shrimp
comes back to the surface, dip your fingers in the batter and drizzle
the batter over the shrimp like this. By doing this you can create extra crispy shrimp
tempura since the deep-frying time for shrimp is only one minute to one minute and a half, please
apply the additional batter quickly. Otherwise, the shrimp will be overcooked before
the additional batter becomes crispy. So I recommend deep frying one shrimp at a
time until you get comfortable with it. Okay, this is good. Shrimp tempura is ready. After deep frying everything, please
clean up the oil one last time and once the oil cools down you can
filter the oil and save it for later use. If you want to keep the tempura bits,
please spread them out on paper towels and remove the excess oil.
Then transfer them to a ziplock and store them in the freezer. I use them
as a topping for udon and soba noodle. Alright, so this is all the tempura I made.
The crispness of the tempura stays for about 30 minutes but tempura is best eaten when it's super
hot and crispy. So I recommend deep frying each ingredient one more time for 10 to 20 seconds
at 170 degrees Celsius just before serving. I believe that is the best way to enjoy tempura
at home. And when i arrange tempura on a plate, I always make it look three-dimensional. So
I always place hard vegetables like carrots and kabocha squash first and lean the rest
of the vegetables and shrimps against them. And at the end, put some grated daikon radish next
to the tempura and you delicious tempura is done. Reheat the tempura sauce and pour it
into a bowl and it's ready to eat. Alright, so that's it for today. I hope
you enjoyed watching today's video. So if you did, please hit the like
button and leave a comment below. Thank you so much for watching and I
will see you in my next video bye-bye. you
